


A Beach in Scotland

by Tales



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 03:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/857272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tales/pseuds/Tales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Voldemort is dead, the battles are over but for some of our characters there are still loose ends to be tied up. Hermione never doubted that her parents were safe and sound in Australia, but if she can be Portkeyed from her bed in the middle of the night, by the Wizard the entire ministry most wants to find, then maybe they're not as safe as she thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beach in Scotland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Karelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karelia/gifts).



Hermione woke as her senses told her she was about to heave, a sharp pain in her hip making her gasp. By the time she realised that it wasn't nausea that had unsettled her stomach, but a Portkey, she was already feeling for her wand and shielding her eyes from the silvery light in which she was now bathed.

Her right hand found only uneven grass with an occasional jagged rock lurking between the clumps. Her left she slowly lowered to find the light came from two separate sources. The brighter of the two, a Patronus, moved restlessly through the air above her. Tall dry stone walls surrounded her on all sides, but an indigo-purple sky hinted that dawn would arrive in an hour or two. A second, less intense glow emanated from a shallow-sided stone bowl resting on the ground.

"If you wish to find your parents, Miss Granger, I suggest you view the memories in that Pensieve." The voice that came from the silvery creature was instantly recognisable. The soft, reasonable tone was not. "I will be waiting, should you wish to speak to me, when that is done. My Patronus will guide you. If, however, it returns to me without you, I will simply re-activate the Portkey which brought you here and you will not see me again. Choose well, Miss Granger, but choose quickly."

Hermione lashed out at the ground with one foot, regretting it instantly when her toe made contact with another of those hidden stones. "I _hate_ you, Severus Snape!" she screamed at the sky, even as she stumbled to her feet and made her way to the basin. She would never forgive herself if her parents came to harm due to her stubborn pride. There had never been any question of her walking away. Besides, shortie pyjamas and pre-dawn visits to ruined keeps did not mix. Perhaps the memory would be of somewhere warmer.

> _"Think, Miss Granger!" She was alone with Professor Snape in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. Her cheeks had a roundness she barely recognised, her curls a silken sheen. She had thought then that she was prepared for whatever might come. She had been wrong. Snape loomed over her, his hands gripping her upper arms so tightly that her whole body seemed to rock when he gave her an angry shake._
> 
> _"I see no problem," she responded coldly, though her voice had the tiniest tremor._
> 
> _"No? And what will you do after?" His supercilious gaze seemed to invade her mind as he glared scornfully down at her. "What will_ they _do? Selling a business takes time, Miss Granger, or did you plan to have them simply leave, let their client base dwindle to nothing and with it most of the business's value? Let their physical assets be taken by banks and bailiffs so that they find themselves in, at best, relative penury when they should be planning their retirement? And that's before we even discuss the magic you're talking about," he hissed. "Do you understand what that would do to them?"_
> 
> _The younger Hermione sniffed defiantly. "They would be safe. They would be happy—"_
> 
> _"They would be lost to you forever, and you to them!" With that he finally released his grip, his vehemence lending enough of a push to send her stumbling a couple of steps backward before she regained her balance. He drew in a deep, sighing breath and raked a hand through his hair. "They are_ Muggles _. Compared to me or you, they are like helpless babes. And just as a child, beaten once, will always expect further blows, so it will be if you use magic on your parents._
> 
> _"The trauma, their powerlessness, makes it a form of rape. Even if their memories were restored, even if you proved to them that they had agreed to the plan before you did it, any love they have for you would wither and die. You cannot love that which you fear, Miss Granger. No one can love that which they fear. It is a door that can never be closed again once you step through it, and I would not wish it on anyone."_

The figures began to fade, turning to mist-like swirls even as her schoolgirl self spluttered that it was a price she was willing to pay.

With a last few whispers of sound before a new scene began to form she caught the words, "What about them? Do you think them cowards? Or perhaps you think you already mean nothing to them? Is it a price _they_ would choose to pay?"

Hermione shook her head as if to clear it. Silvery grey surrounded her on all sides and she spun in place until colour began to leech into the amorphous substance and it seemed to flow together into the solidity of the creams and beiges of her parents' old living room, though a strangely clutter-free version thereof. A more innocent Hermione perched between her mum and dad on the edge of the leather sofa, while the professor explained his plan.

> _"You won't be able to have any contact with Hermione, not if she insists that the Potter boy will need her, and it is true that he's incapable of completing the simplest task without her help. However, Miss Granger has set up an email account for me and shown me how to access it. Once a week, if I have freedom of movement, or whenever circumstances allow, I will visit a Muggle library and send a message. It will not be much, most likely no more than, 'No news is good news,' and the most general of updates on the magical world, but it is something, and I should be in a position to know if... things go badly for her._
> 
> _"It's also unlikely to bring any wizards to your door. There_ are _, I'm sure, ways to track an email, but I doubt that any of the Dark Lord's followers would care to become so familiar with Muggle technology. I will take you to Amsterdam by Portkey. You have all the documents you might need under your false names. Where you go from there, it's better that neither your daughter nor I know. If it ever becomes safe to restore her memories, she can contact you as I will. If not, she'll go on believing that she carried out her original dunderheaded plan. I shall let you say your goodbyes."_

Hermione tumbled abruptly back to the damp grass between the ruin's walls, thrown from the memory as her professor's simulacrum had stalked toward the illusory room's patio doors.

As she collected her thoughts she turned to glare at the Patronus hovering over her. "He couldn't just have knocked on the front door in daylight, could he?" she asked.

The silvery creature turned its head away in response and swept through an empty doorway, staying close enough to the ground to allow her to see what looked more like a goat trail than a proper footpath.

"And it would have been out of the question to supply socks and shoes?" she added in even more irritation. The ground banked away steeply on either side as she crossed what must once have been a defensive ditch. Once over that, the path turned off to right. Looking back, she could see the castle stood atop an outcrop. Her path ran roughly parallel to a cliff, and now that her heart was no longer pounding in her ears she could make out the lulling wash of the ocean far below. 

She hobbled after the Patronus, mentally cursing its creator with every pebble that gouged into her skin, every uneven step that threatened to turn her ankle. Then, after another sharp turn, this one to the left, she spotted a blue-flamed beacon on the rocks of an inlet over a hundred feet below. Had she had her wand, she would have Apparated down there, _'Constant vigilance',_ be damned. She didn't, though, and she was forced to follow the meandering path further along the cliff-top before it finally zigzagged down to the water's edge. 

"You are a sadistic bastard, Severus Snape," she accused, as she searched for somewhere she might be able to sit down and check the soles of her feet to see how bad the damage was. The beach seemed more rounded rocks than sand, the area where Snape's fire was housed a jagged-looking mound, rising like the shoulder of a rock giant asleep partly under the waves. 

He turned at the sound of her voice, as if until that moment he'd been absorbed by watching the shift of light on the water or trying despite the darkness to make out some far coast on the edge of the horizon.

"So I've been told." 

The voice sounded weary, and Hermione's anger died away even as she noticed his shorter, layered haircut and his Muggle clothes. "Where on earth have you been?" The words tripped out before she realised their impropriety. "I mean, everyone's been looking for you."

"And that is why no one has found me." He began to pick his way down from his perch to the level where Hermione now stood. This afforded her a wonderful view of his thick-soled boots, and if they'd been a few sizes smaller, she would have been tempted to tussle with him for them. "I plan to be several thousand miles away by the time they decide I belong in Azkaban, but before that we have some unfinished business to take care of."

"Where are my parents?" she enquired eagerly.

"Africa somewhere, or so they tell me now that it's safer to communicate. They're doing something with Oxfam or the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders, one of those."

"Oh!" Hermione could see how that would appeal to her parents, but she couldn't imagine her _soft_ suburban parents in some Third World clinic. "Isn't that dangerous?"

"Well, it's not the _safest_ place in the world _._ It's what they _can_ do, He— Miss Granger." Before she realised what he was doing, he had removed his three-quarter length wool coat and, in a swirl of black, had it wrapped around her shoulders. "You were shivering," he interjected as she was about to open her mouth. "Go and sit next to the fire." With that he pulled a white cotton square from his jeans pocket, transforming it into a fluffy white quilt, which he spread out over the rock where he had been standing when she arrived.

"My feet—"

He barely seemed to give a downward glance before he had swept her into his arms, coat and all, and they both rose from the ground. He landed beside the fire, close enough to the edge of the eiderdown to set her upon it without stepping on it himself.

"Let me see," he instructed as he dropped to one knee. She recognised his next wand movements as being those associated with a cleaning spell commonly used on the patients at St. Mungo's. When he lifted her bare foot into his lap, she bit her lower lip to contain a gasp at the lightning tingle his touch induced. The sight of those capable, slender fingers probing her flesh was unexpectedly erotic. "I can't see or feel anything lodged in there. Once I close the cuts you should be fine, though you might want to use some bruise salve in the morning." 

With that he began to hum, a slow deep sound from the centre of his chest. Then his lips began to move, forming unknown words in an unfamiliar tongue, and Hermione felt tears form in her eyes as she was enfolded in tenderness, the healing magic seeming to touch more intensely on her soul than on her flesh, surrounding her with sensations of well-being, immersing her in, for want of a better name, love.

He finished with her left foot, setting it down on the quilt. Then, he gestured for her to make room. When she did so, he turned and sat on the edge of the transfigured handkerchief, as if wanting to be more comfortable before he started over. She ended up sitting almost at right angles to him as he took her right foot onto his lap, her newly-healed left resting with its sole against his thigh. Drawing his coat tightly around herself, she inhaled the scent from its collar and lay back until he finished his work.

Fingers brushed lightly against her cheek, a silky voice causing her to respond with a rumbling in her throat akin to a kitten's contented purr. "Come on, Sleeping Beauty. Miles to go and memories to reclaim... Wake up, Miss Granger..." She snapped awake as if someone had popped a balloon at her ear. As she sat up, she caught what seemed to be the tail end of his own movement. _'Did he just call me—'_

"Memories to reclaim? How? I went into those memories you left in the ruin, but they... Well, they didn't feel like they were mine, more like something I was watching on T.V. or like being in the middle of rehearsals for a play."

"That's because they weren't yours. They were mine. Your recollections of those events are still locked up in that sleepy little head of yours. All you need to do is speak the trigger phrase aloud and they will come back to you. I would advise you to be comfortable. In fact..." He shuffled back on their makeshift picnic blanket and then spread his legs. "It's best if I hold you. You may flail about a bit as the memories resurface, and I don't want you to go head-butting any rocks."

"You couldn't think of a _sandy_ beach?"

"I like this one, and I thought the ruins would serve. I'm afraid I didn't consider your lack of footwear. When we _did_ swim here we used to wear sandshoes. Mostly, we'd just come down to throw stones and save the swimming for the beach in town." 

Hermione couldn't help but think of the _boys'_ reactions if they were to see her cradled between Severus Snape's enticingly jean-clad legs. She was more than a little shocked herself that Se— Professor Snape had made the suggestion, and yet, she had no doubt that, close as his metaphorical toe might come to the teacher-student line, _he_ would never be the one to step over it. He would protect her. He always had.

"We who?" she finally dared to ask in a whisper.

"Dad's side of the family. Grandad, Gran, couple of uncles and aunts, handful of cousins. Back in the days when all the factories would shut down for the 'fair fortnight'. The track leads to the back end of the campsite." He nodded as if to indicate where the v-shaped gully met the horizon. "Port Patrick's on past the ruins about a mile. We'd all walk into town every night and get ice-cream, play miniature golf, buy another deck of RNLI playing cards." 

The sky was beginning to lighten over the waves as she settled back against his chest, his hands wrapping around her waist to hold her wrists.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Call it a calculated risk. I performed the memory block. That means I have an over all sense of some of the things you'll remember soon. Your mother also has a way of reading between the lines. She seemed to think it would help me to know some of the things you had written in your diaries—"

_"My diaries!"_ In her shock, Hermione twisted to face him, almost knocking the pair of them over. "My _mother_ has my diaries. She _read_ my diaries? She read _you_ my diaries?"

"On rare occasions," he responded, back in his unflappable, teacher tone, "when she felt I needed a kick in the arse. Now, do you want those memories back or don't you?"

"Of course I do. Get on and trigger me already," She turned her back to him once more and scooted back against him again.

"I can't. It has to be your own voice." He released her left wrist for long enough to delve into his back pocket and pull out a strip of parchment, which he unfolded before passing it to her. "Read it aloud."

Hermione's jaw dropped and her eyes bulged. "You have got to be kidding me."

"It had to be something you wouldn't say unless you wanted to remove the block."

Hermione might just have used her elbows a little more than was strictly necessary in her last shuffling effort to get comfortable. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she enunciated her words in a clear, clipped tone. "I am pregnant with Gilderoy Lockhart's lovechild. Bastard."

It hit her like a six-foot wave, bowing her body back with the shock, image upon image upon image, and she did flail and toss, but through it all strong arms cradled her and long legs wrapped around her own, mitigating the worst of their kicking. Finally, as the terror at the onslaught abated and she began to be able to make out individual scenes, she became aware of his voice whispering at her ear. "Shhh! I've got you. I've got you. It'll be over soon. I've got you." 

In the end she was quiescent in his arms, allowing her recollections to fall back into place. 

How she had gone to him for help when she had planned to alter her parents' memories. 

How he had made her write to her parents, carrying the letter himself so that it wouldn't be intercepted. 

How she had warned them to find long term locums for their practice and tenants for their house, to put those things of sentimental value into storage, to choose someone they could trust with power of attorney over their affairs so they could ensure all their bills were paid in their absence and take care of any developments, to make plans to move on, and to do it all carefully in case they were being watched. 

How he had provided them with a Portkey that would take them to Grimmauld Place if an attack came before the end of the school year. 

How she had insisted on brewing Potions for Madam Pomfrey to make up for all his help. 

How, one time, he'd allowed her to help the nurse when he came stumbling back to the dungeons in the early hours. How she had held his hand as Poppy had reset a compound fracture. How Dumbledore had arrived as the professor drifted into a drugged stupor, and had twinkled at her and told her he would trust Severus with his life. 

How she had known, long before Harry, that Severus Snape was the bravest man she would ever know. 

How she had scribbled in her diary about her fear he wouldn't make it through the conflict then to come. How she hoped she was as much his friend as a pupil could be. How she wished she would have the opportunity, one day, to know him on a more equal footing. How, if she couldn't, she would measure every man she met against his intellect, his magical prowess, his lithe way of moving, his stinging wit and his sense of honour and duty. How she expected to find them all wanting.

"You took _us_ away," she whispered.

"I _had_ to, Hermione. Didn't you work it out? Potter was meant to take the Elder Wand from my cold, dead hand. Of course, Albus didn't exactly put it like that, just that it was imperative that he never know my true allegiance, but that was what he meant. I couldn't have you picking away at why I did what I did. I had to make you forget you ever saw me as anything other than your teacher. Your mother kept your diaries, so that you wouldn't have evidence to contradict what you thought you knew. I— Well, I expected her to take anything she read there as the ramblings of an infatuated schoolgirl, but she convinced me you—"

Hermione slapped at his arms and doubled over, clutching at her stomach as if she wanted to retch. "Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! You bastard! Oh God! I _kissed_ Ronald Weasley."

A guffaw of laughter sounded at her ear, and his hands shifted to her shoulders, drawing her back to him again. "If that is the worst of your sins, Hermione..."

"But I never would have—"

"Perhaps not, perhaps yes. Adrenaline does strange things to a person, and you're a free agent."

"But—"

"Hermione, things here are going to settle down. You're going to finish your education and build a life for yourself, and I will be far, far away, probably forever. Definitely, unless Potter starts some misguided campaign to keep me out of Azkaban."

"So this is goodbye?"

"For now."

"Do you have somewhere to go?"

"I have an invitation to stay with friends for a few months, the summer at least. Things might get a little crowded if their daughter comes to visit... She'll probably kick me out on the street to make room for her books."

"And now?"

"Now, we send you back to wherever you were before you came here." He lifted his wand and touched it to a slender gold and sapphire band Hermione wore on the ring finger of her right hand, one that had been a sixteenth birthday gift from her parents, one she never took off.

"Can't I owl you?" The frown lines over the bridge of his nose deepened. "Or something?"

"Or something." His smirk seemed teasing rather than sneering. "You'll work it out. _Portus!"_

So it was that she appeared back on top of the camp bed in Ginny's room at the Burrow, tilting it over on its side and falling onto the floor in a tangle of blankets and Severus Snape's black Crombie coat. 

It seemed that at some point someone had alerted the whole house to her disappearance, and in the uproar of her return, and her refusal to tell anyone where she had been or with whom, she soon forgot all about Severus's cryptic comment. It was the following day, when she had walked into Ottery St. Catchpole to email her parents from the village library, that she remembered. That email wasn't the only one she sent. After all, she _had_ been the one to set up Severus's account. 

**Author's Note:**

> Recipient: karelia  
> Rating: General, unless you're overly worried about cussing.  
> Prompt: I would love to see a scene of Hermione on a beach in Scotland. With Snape or without.  
> Author's Notes: Beta-ed by the lovely geyer.


End file.
